Miss Seeton Cracks the Case (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 9)

by Hamilton Crane

  Elsie had a good appetite, and Delphick watched in some awe as she chomped her way through a full three-course lunch in startling contrast to Miss Seeton, who declined a starter and asked for a half-portion entree. “So warm today,” Miss Seeton murmured, resolving to have plain ice cream for her dessert. Bob Ranger sat wondering whether he or Elsie, who must have weighed almost as much as himself while lacking eighteen inches of his height, would make the longer column on the chief superintendent’s subsequent expenses chit. His calculations as the meal continued so unnerved him that when the pudding arrived, he found himself declining it.

  Delphick glanced quickly at his sergeant, and followed Bob’s troubled gaze to Elsie’s plate, on which the waitress had just installed a helping of jam rolypoly with custard. The sight of all those calories made Bob long to loosen his tie, while Miss Seeton turned slightly pale. But Elsie was delighted with her choice: filling, and free!

  Back at her house, she took her time removing her bulk from the shining police car for the full benefit of all the curtain-twitchers. She’d half hoped that the local paper might after all have sent someone, but perhaps a photograph wouldn’t be as swanky as she’d thought, with Miss Seeton the wispy little scrap she’d turned out to be, hardly worth the bother. But the chief superintendent seemed to think a lot of her, so Elsie wasn’t going to carp—not unless they had the cheek to expect a cup of tea or anything, when they’d had coffee (three cups, she’d had) at the restaurant. And if that was how the police did themselves every day, Elsie was a bit surprised they needed a Miss Seeton or anyone else to help them. They ought to be healthy enough to catch any number of villains, eating as well as that.

  But they weren’t catching them, were they? Not the lot the papers were calling the Sherry Gang . . .

  Now Miss Seeton came into her own. With his deferential positioning of her in a high-backed chair near the window, Delphick intimated that it was her turn to command. From her sketching case she withdrew her block and pencils, setting out all her impedimenta on the table beside her and looking at Elsie with a questioning smile. “Suppose,” invited Miss Seeton, “you were to tell me exactly what happened when you first met these women, and how they came home with you. That is, if the memory does not distress you too much,” though privately she thought Mrs. Birchanger looked remarkably undistressed, considering the ordeal she’d undergone, those dreadful people drugging her and then hunting high and low throughout the house for things to steal. One realised, of course, that the poor woman was putting a brave face on it and must be suffering under the surface, her nerves . . .

  Miss Seeton gazed at Elsie Birchanger and had to admit she’d seldom seen anyone so unsuffering and nerveless. Mrs. Birchanger’s chief emotion was clearly anger, which she had suppressed during that delicious—but so filling, she hoped Mr. Delphick didn’t feel insulted that she hadn’t eaten more, but dear Bob had obviously understood, she could tell—that delicious lunch, and so bad for the digestion, one would suppose, to restrain one’s feelings for so long and in such a way. It would do Mrs. Birchanger good to talk about it to one she hoped might be considered a sympathetic listener. She smiled at Mrs. Birchanger and prepared to listen.

  “At the greengrocer’s, it was,” began Elsie, folding her brawny arms across her chest and glowering at the recollection. “Been everywhere else, I had, got everything bar my spuds and some green veg, but there was only the one girl behind the counter instead of two, like usual, so it took me longer than I thought, and when I come out that bleeding bus was heading up the road away from the stop, wasn’t it? So I knew I’d have to wait a good half-hour for the next, with my knees not being up to the walk and having a bus-pass anyway, shame not to make use of it when the council’s given it me, that’s what I always think.”

  Miss Seeton nodded, and made a brief note on her pad to remind herself, once the official part of the afternoon was over, to mention the invaluable help her own knees had found among the pages of Yoga and Younger Every Day. Perhaps Mrs. Birchanger could benefit as she had done? Although, it had to be said that more benefit might be obtained if she were to lose a little weight, though one’s feeling was that personal remarks of such a nature were not only impertinent, but likely to meet with rejection of no matter what sensible suggestion might accompany them. She would simply give Mrs. Birchanger the title of the book, then leave the rest to her good sense.

  Chief Superintendent Delphick leaned forward as he saw Miss Seeton with her pencil in her hand, scarcely looking at the sketching block. At times like these she produced her most valuable drawings—but not, he soon realised, now. He sat too far away to make out exactly what she was doing, but it seemed that she just jotted down a few words without much effort and nodded to Elsie to continue: which Elsie did.

  “Half an hour to wait, and me with three bags of shopping, and not a soul I knew to ask a lift off. I was that cross! Specially when the woman as had been in front of me and so slow at choosing what she wanted, she’d got into a car parked on them double yellow lines with a disabled sticker on it, and her no more disabled than what I am, with my knees, and what do the council do about it? I’ll tell you, nothing is what they do, and people parking all over the show just as they fancy, getting in everyone’s way and upsetting the bus timetables. Because that’s what she said, this other woman as come along with what I took to be her daughter, walking from the centre of town they were, and it was the bus before I’d seen, they said, running late, lots of traffic hold-ups there were, and no idea when the proper bus’d be along. And me having to stand there with my poor knees, and the sun scorching hot enough for July!”

  She glared round at her interested audience. “Well now, I ask you—what would you have done, if you’d have been me? When they was offering me a lift to my very door!”

  “I imagine,” remarked Miss Seeton quietly, “that you were grateful to them for their kindness, and accepted the offer as anyone would, in similar circumstances.” She did not notice Bob Ranger’s look as she added, “I’m sure in my own case I would have accepted just as you did, because who will suspect anyone of doing a kindly act from such sinister motives?” She went slightly pink. “It seems so . . . such a shame to be so mistrustful—”

  “Catch me trusting anyone like that again!” broke in Mrs. Birchanger. “I’d not trust ’em as far as I could throw the bleeders, if as far as that, believe you me. Helped me and me bags right into the house. Set them down over there in the hall,” with a directional nod, “and even asked if I’d like ’em to unpack and put away for me! But I said no,” she added grimly, “what with not caring for strangers poking and prying about the place . . .”

  For the first time a flicker of emotion other than anger crossed Elsie’s face, but it was soon gone. “The bleeders did all the poking and prying they wanted, didn’t they? Got me asleep as quick as a wink. You still look a little weary, dear. How about a pick-me-up from this bottle of sherry we just bought down the off-licence. And away I went, after only one sip and no more than that passing my lips, which is the honest truth.” Elsie looked fiercely at Miss Seeton. “And powerful stuff, it must have been. I could’ve been killed!”

  It occurred to Delphick that anyone with such an eye for a bargain as Elsie Birchanger would be unlikely to have held herself to only one sip. She probably drained the glass and asked for a refill, though you’d never get her to admit it—which meant she could indeed have had a narrow escape. The fate of the late Regimental Sergeant Major Brent was in his mind as he looked from Miss Seeton—what was it she’d just scribbled on her sketching pad?—to Elsie Birchanger, and back again.

  Miss Seeton was looking troubled. Such a pity that by their unpleasant behaviour these people had destroyed Mrs. Birchanger’s faith in human nature, or perhaps only for a short while, but anything one could do to help improve matters one would, naturally, be pleased to perform, but—well, the chief superintendent would not wish to see her first sketch, of Mrs. Birchanger standing on her head in the classic y
oga pose which one had found so very helpful, if a little difficult at first . . .

  She brought herself back to the present with an effort, but Elsie’s complaining did not sound very different from what she had been saying before one drifted off into that inconvenient daydream. Nevertheless, Miss Seeton had to be sure she had missed nothing of importance: the chief superintendent would expect it.

  She cleared her throat. Mrs. Birchanger broke off, and stared at her. Was the funny little soul going to say something important at last, and get down to business?

  “Perhaps,” suggested Miss Seeton, with an anxious eye on Delphick, “we could try to draw the likenesses of these two ladies now. For instance, which—”

  “Ladies, you call ’em?” Elsie uttered a sharp bark of scornful laughter. “Not them! Proper tramps, they were, and to call ’em bitches is insulting dogs, that’s what.”

  “Well,” persisted Miss Seeton, “perhaps we could try to draw their likenesses, anyway. Two women, I understand, and of course one would be so much less inclined to suspect two when they appeared to be mother and daughter, a perfectly normal little shopping expedition . . . suppose we begin with whichever it was who first spoke to you?”

  Elsie admitted that it was the older one. Looked just like anyone else, she did, in an old-fashioned kind of way, not so many people nowadays being given to head scarves and hair curlers, but done her best to smarten herself up, she had, with lipstick and earrings and at least she weren’t wearing slippers in the street, which was a habit Elsie couldn’t abide, being so slovenly, which if she’d looked it there wasn’t any way she’d have accepted a lift in the first place . . .

  What did the woman actually look like? Elsie was vague at first: dark hair, what she could see of it, and her eyes were dark, too, but that could have been the makeup, clever ways some people had with it, though Elsie didn’t hold with painting her face, herself, being pleased with what the Lord had given and ungrateful to act otherwise . . .

  Elsie talked, and Miss Seeton listened, nodding encouragement and from time to time putting questions. Suddenly, before Mrs. Birchanger’s busy tongue had stilled, there was a further sketch on the top sheet of Miss Seeton’s block—

  A female pirate chief, her cutlass in her hand, complete with black eyepatch and dangling earrings and a scarf tied over her head.

  She stood, one foot resting on a wooden cask, on the deck of her pirate ship, indicated by a few swift lines from Miss Seeton’s pencil. Behind her clustered her pirate crew, hastily drawn and shown mostly by shadows, though two of the figures were more distinct: one male, one female.

  Two women, one man, a flamboyant group of pirates . . . or had Miss Seeton simply not felt like drawing the vultures?

  chapter

  ~10~

  RUMOURS OF MISS Seeton’s arrest in connection with the Dick Turpin robbery witnessed, and experienced, by the Nuts were flying around Plummergen with even more exaggeration than usual. The previous inhabitant of Sweetbriars, Old Mrs. Bannet, had never done one part of the many strange and suspicious things her god-daughter and heir—at least, that’s who she said she was, but with that crooked solicitor who’d handled the estate you could never be sure, could you?—got involved in, far too often, and far too deep.

  “Rubbish,” retorted Martha Bloomer, when this argument was put to her. “She’d been visiting the old lady on and off for years before Mrs. Bannet died, and I ought to know if anyone did, doing for them both as I have for so long. Was it either of them’s fault if the solicitor wasn’t all he ought to have been?”

  Mrs. Spice was not appeased. “You’ll not try to deny, I hope, that there’s been some odd goings-on since Miss Seeton came to live in the village. Witchcraft, for one—” Martha snorted in disgust—“not to mention the fight all along the Street with them motorbike riders, and the burglaries, and that poor little kiddie being killed, and the drugs—”

  “And why should Miss Seeton be blamed for any of that?” demanded Martha, but Mrs. Spice, wilfully deaf, continued her glum recital.

  “Then there was the robbery at the post office, say what you will, that business with the cheese was suspicious, never mind Mr. Stillman denying it, but there she was again—”

  “Rubbish, and slander, too!” exploded Martha Bloomer, favouring Mrs. Spice with a very hard look. “I suppose next you’ll be saying how Miss Seeton buried that poor soul in the bunker, and committed the murder as well!”

  But even Mrs. Spice could not pin that particular crime—if crime it was, being so far only on Plummergen’s suspect list—on Miss Seeton, much though she would have liked to. Old Mrs. Bannet may have lived in the village since the start of the century, but her young cousin (if cousin she was, Mrs. Bloomer doing for the family or not) had not begun to visit her until several years after the last war, when the bunker murder (if murder it was) had taken place, and Miss Seeton was an even younger woman. Had she at any relevant time paid a visit to her cousin Flora, Plummergen would have noticed (being always on the alert for German spies) and remembered—Plummergen does not readily forget.

  The bunker referred to was in the garden of Old Mother Dawkin’s cottage, as it was still known. Old Mother Dawkin had finally died earlier that spring—some insisted that it was from grief at the loss of Dozey, her smelly Peke; others that she had never fully recovered from her exertions on that momentous night when the entire village went to exorcise the disused church at Iverhurst. And her death had resulted in an interesting problem for Plummergen gossip . . .

  The vicar’s sister was pouring tea. Arthur should have been there: but he was late, which was nothing new. Molly Treeves was sometimes a little vexed with her brother, although generally she didn’t bother: life was, after all, too short to waste it in nagging for changes in someone’s nature which were simply an impossible dream. And he was happy pottering about Plummergen on his pastoral round; she hoped he would long remain so. Provided none of his parishioners guessed at what she, with her sibling’s instinct, had guessed—that he had lost his faith—then long might his absentminded happiness continue.

  There was a clattering at the door, and the Reverend Arthur Treeves appeared. He blinked at the teapot in his sister’s hand.

  “Dear me. Is it so late? I had no idea. I have been talking with the new young couple in Mrs. Dawkin’s cottage, such a pleasant pair—Clavering, was the name? Manuden, I think, perhaps.” The Reverend Arthur frowned. “Or possibly Albury, I forget—but a pleasant young couple, indeed.”

  Molly sighed briefly as she handed her brother his cup, but there was little point in wishing he would pay more attention. “Manuden,” she said, jogging his wayward memory. “They came to church on Sunday and introduced themselves at the end of the service, don’t you remember? Betsy and Dennis, they asked to be called.”

  A smile lit his face. “Yes, of course! And Dennis is a splendid young fellow—somewhat older than his wife, I might have said, if that would not be an impertinence, but they do seem remarkably happy together, and he is intent on building his bride a proper home, even if they are only to live among us for the few months of summer. I fear that Mrs. Dawkin did not have your gift for running a household,” said the vicar, blinking fondly at his sister. “Mrs.—er, Betsy, spoke of cobwebs and dust in a manner that disturbed me greatly—to think that a parishioner of mine should have lived in such squalor during her latter years!”

  “The Manudens come from London,” remarked Molly drily.

  Arthur blinked at her again. “Do they? Yes, I suppose they do—at least I believe Dennis said something of the sort. A breath of fresh air, he said, something about his wife having been ill and needing the country life to help her convalesce.”

  “She looks healthy enough to me, but that would explain why they’re making such a fuss about a few cobwebs. People from the city don’t understand people from the country, and they expect it to be all thatched roofs and roses round the door and chickens pecking happily in the yard—”

  “He
said nothing about keeping chickens,” the Reverend Arthur murmured with a frown. “Indeed, under the terms of the lease, I’m not at all sure that chickens could be kept.”

  “Really, Arthur! I was simply trying to explain that in the city life everything is, well, more sterilised, if that is the correct word. Milk comes in bottles, not from cows, and eggs arrive with a lion stamped on them, neatly packed in cardboard trays.”

  Why was Molly now saying that the Claverings were going to keep chickens—and a cow, as well? “Surely there is not enough room in the garden for so much livestock,” protested Arthur, trying to envisage the size of Mrs. Dawkin’s little patch of land. Dozey had never complained about lack of space, but a Peke probably didn’t require much room. A cow, on the other hand . . .

  “Who said anything about livestock?” enquired Molly, and smiled grimly. “If the Manudens are planning to set up a smallholding, they’ll have their work cut out. Remember who their neighbours are! Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine wouldn’t care for it at all, I’m sure. What sort—” she fixed Arthur with a stern eye—“of livestock did they say?”

  The vicar rocked back in his chair, and a few drops of tea splashed into his saucer. “They didn’t say,” he said, “at least I don’t think so. I thought you did. And surely it was I who said that the lease would not permit it?”

  Molly decided to give it up as a bad job: just another of Arthur’s misunderstandings. She would visit the Manudens herself as soon as she could find time, to learn exactly what they intended to do while they were in Plummergen. She knew she couldn’t rely on her brother to tell her anything accurate: she’d been foolish to expect it of him.